The Return of Wonder
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
From the poem Auguries of Innocence by William Blake”
Wonder is a feeling of awe mixed with adoration. We feel wonder when we experience new things, behold astonishing beauty, encounter the mysterious or the otherworldly.
When we are young, wonder comes easily to us. Everything thing is new, and much of life does not have an explanation. German author Franz Kafka wrote, “Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
As we become adults, our sense of wonder grows dull. Things that were once amazing become familiar, even ordinary. Negative experiences turn wonder into cynicism. We come face to face with evil and the ugliness of life, and we learn of our own weaknesses. Loss and disappointment invade our lives. When we are young, we believe nothing bad will ever happen to us, but then it does. Our wonder often disappears with our innocence.
We might yearn for a return to our childhood, but are we destined to end up where we started? Jesus said we must become like little children to enter the Kingdom of God. Did He mean we must become just like we were as babes, wide-eyed at the world’s glory? There is nothing wrong with this endeavor. Gaining a new appreciation for what we take for granted is a gift of God. However, I suspect Jesus meant far more than this. He spoke of becoming a child of God, and God’s children are heirs to a glory than transcends anything the eyes can behold.
Wonder begins in life the moment we open our eyes, but the glory the eyes observe always fades. It is never enough to hold our gaze, and it was never meant to be enough. There is a greater marvel that never ceases to transfix, and it begins the day we open the eyes of our heart.
Elizabeth Browning, a well-known American poet, wrote, “Earth is crammed with heaven, and every bush is aflame with the glory of God. But only those who see take off their shoes; the rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” Browning was talking about a splendor not everyone sees, the glory of the infinite. It fills all and defines all. Yet, we cannot comprehend it on our own. God must unveil it. When He does so, we call it a revelation.
When God told Moses His name, “I AM WHO I AM,” He was describing His transcendence. He has always been, He is, and He will always be. Likewise, God’s glory is always so. We cannot add to it or diminish it. All that is left is for us to see it, and seeing it redefines us. A revelation is the end of a false identity and the unveiling of our true identity in Christ. The Lord invites us to take part in the glory that defines everything, and if we answer His call our lives will never cease to be filled with wonder.
I have been preaching sermons for around 40 years. When I was younger, I focused on doing. My goal was to motivate people to do more for God. If we do more, God will bless more was my message. I believed our efforts could bring heaven down. I know now I was picking blackberries! I couldn’t comprehend the glory that always is because of the blindness of my ego. To me it was an achievement rather than a revelation. Now, I rarely try to get people to do more. I don’t want people to duplicate the vanity of my youth. I want them to be free from it. We need a revelation of God’s glory and the knowledge we are a part. It is an awakening, like rising from the dead (Ephesians 5:14).
Doing starts with seeing. The Christian life is an unfolding revelation of Christ. Our growth is more about redefinition that accomplishment, and our wrestling with God is more about identity than good and evil.
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you (Matthew 7:1-2).”
Thorncrown Chapel differs from most churches. We have two Sunday services, but we have a different congregation every time we open our doors. Everyone from Amish to Hells Angels has attended. I have noticed that we get two types of people, receivers and judges. Some receive us and the Lord freely, and these are always blessed. It is as if Christ sits down beside them and reveals His love. Others come as judges. They measure us to according to their standard, and they invariably exclude us. Though the Lord is present, they cannot discern Him.
The Pharisees in Jesus’s day had contempt for anybody who fell short of their interpretation of the Law. Though God incarnate stood before them, they could not comprehend Him. In the same way we become blind to Christ when we glory in who we are and what we have done.
Very early in life we take on the role of a judge. It happens when we encounter our own weaknesses or evil in others. Additionally, life’s circumstances force the role upon as. We not only measure ourselves and each other, we measure our lives. The first time we don’t get what we want or if life seems unfair, we rule that life is bad. Judges define reality according to self. Receivers live in the reality of God in Christ Jesus. Both look upon the same world, but one sees eternal glory in all things and the other at best gets glimpses of momentary fading glory.
What do you see when you look at yourself? Can you grasp the splendor of who you are or are you just ordinary? Some measure themselves by looking at others. We must be a star with exceptional talents and achievements. We need to get noticed. When my son was very young, he heard that some people are stars. He didn’t like that. He said that makes the rest of us the blank space in-between! If you think someone is more important than you, somewhere along the line you have made comparisons. You have become a judge and the person on trial is yourself. Some people have a driving need to be somebody, but that is probably because they think they are the blank space in-between. Because their eyes on are themselves, they don’t know who they are.
Some would love to call themselves ordinary, but they believe they don’t qualify. Shame is their lot. Someone told them they didn’t measure up, stole their honor, and replaced it with shame. I grew up in a family torn by alcoholism. Even though I did nothing wrong, shame became my home. I had an inferiority complex that made criticism almost unbearable. Fear was a constant companion, and my life became a consuming effort to measure up, first through academics, then through religion. It took decades for me to realize God didn’t want me to measure up. He wanted to change my measure from self to Christ. While I was trying to preserve my ego, God was bringing me to its end. God knew who I was. He had to work overtime to get me to agree!
If we disagree with the wonder of who we are, Jesus might say that we are thinking as man thinks. Paul might have described such thinking as carnal. God does not measure us like the world does. The world has finite measures of glory and honor. Anything finite can be measured and compared. The ego always looks to finite comparisons to gauge itself and others. These finite measures open the door for judgement. If we can measure it, we can judge it. Who we are, what we do, and what we have become what defines us and our neighbor.
Christ died to give us an infinite measure of worth. He put away the measure of self and replaced it with Himself. Consequently, the way we find identity is through union with Christ. Through our tie to Christ, we find our worth. God works in every gain and loss to remove distinctions between us and him. The more these distinctions die, the more we grasp the wonder of who we are. Our identity is a revelation, not an accomplishment. Rest comes when we agree with God about what is so.
“But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh (James 3:8-12).”
If we judge ourselves, we will also judge our neighbor. Our neighbor is made in God’s image. Who they are is tied to who God is. To demean or devalue another is to demean and devalue God. The Lord does not call us to be judges of ourselves or our neighbor. This does not mean there is no longer right and wrong or consequences to our actions. It means that our tongue should never be a tool to take away human worth. Through Christ we relinquish the weapon of shame and make it our mission to restore honor to the world, even to the worst sinners. Is this not what Jesus did?
The ego is a master at using words to devalue. This becomes especially apparent in an election year. Both sides demonize the other while exalting themselves. The side that does this best often controls the outcome. If you have been through enough of these cycles, you might yearn to leave the world behind. The good news is that Christ revoked your citizenship in the world and transferred you to His kingdom. There we increase worth not by lowering our neighbor but by giving value. We give worth to a world where people are fighting each other to get it.
The Sermon on the Mount paints a glorious picture of those who have left the old system behind for the Kingdom of God. In God’s realm, human worth is non-negotiable. Even when others devalue us, we refuse to devalue in return. Jesus spoke of turning the other cheek. He was referencing the Roman backhand. If you crossed a Roman soldier, you would get a backhand across the face. In that culture, it wasn’t just to hurt you, it was taking away your worth. The Romans were experts at using shame to control behavior. The cross, itself, was the ultimate instrument of shame. It stripped you bare of all human dignity.
To turn the other cheek was rebellion against the world’s system. It was refusing to devalue those who devalue us. It gave worth to those who tried to steal worth. Such a response is only possible when we realize the wonder of who our neighbor is, even if our neighbor is our enemy. To strike them is to strike the Christ, and no citizen of the Kingdom of God can do that. When Christ opens the eyes of our heart, we can no longer see the world as a place measured by humanity’s potential, but as a place filled with the wonder of God’s potential.
“But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment.
For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned (Matthew 12:36–37).”
The Bible has a lot to say about the words that come out of our mouth. It speaks against cursing God and our neighbor. It also speaks against cursing life itself. When things go wrong, profanity often rolls from our lips. When we curse the moments, we become a judge. We pronounce sentence proclaiming that someone, something, or some circumstance is damned or void of God, value, or meaning. Some people take their words lightly, but with them we make serious judgements concerning the minutes, hours, days, and even years of our lives. We do so with an eye on finite things. Our words betray our hearts. When we see no finite glory, we declare there is no glory at all.
Paul revealed that we are in Christ. We are where He is, seated together with Him in the heavenly places, the realm of God. Some say this is positional only and has no bearing on “real life.” Yet, why would God reveal such a staggering identity and then render it insignificant? We dwell in the infinite in this life and the one to come. The heavenly place is an unfolding reality in our life, and it will continue to unfold in the ages to come (Ephesians 2:4-7).
Yet, Paul also declares that Christ is in us. We speak of inviting Jesus into our hearts, but what does this mean? Certainly, it is more than another theoretical proposition! Christ dwells with us in the finite. He inhabits our lives. The God who transcends time and space has come to live in time and space together with us. Our earthly cares and sorrows have become His and our joys. This immeasurable togetherness is the reason we exist. In fact, it is existence (Acts 17:28).
Therefore, is any moment void of God? Is there any second He does not define? In 2 Corinthians eleven and twelve Paul shares a revelation that changed his life. It was so great he came to boast in the things the rest of us curse. God revealed that the worst things in the apostle’s life were meeting places. Weakness was where Christ gave Himself to Paul. When finite glory wanes and we face circumstances that appear to have no value, we are in the perfect place to behold infinite glory. If we sit as a judge over the moment, we miss the rendezvous. It traps us in the illusion of separateness.
Every second of our lives has eternal value, because God dwells together with us in the seconds. The moments of our lives are His habitation. Such a discovery brings healing to the past and great hope for the future. The moments have been redeemed… all of them.
As I write this, we are amid one of the most difficult years I can remember, 2020. Years from now, how will we remember it? If we just count our troubles, we will end up like those who just picked blackberries in Elizabeth Browning’s poem. Or we can seek revelation, for revelation and suffering always go together. God is at work to reveal the glory that was, is, and always will be. It is a glory that does not depend on finite measures of good and bad. This is our home. Here wonder is our constant companion.
